There are several systems allowing a television viewer to be informed about the programs on the different channels he can receive and eventually to easily choose the channels to record. In any case the existing systems are mainly limited to displaying on the television screen data such as the number of the channel to which the receiver is tuned or other information or messages in overlays. In general these systems do now allow an automatic selection from the choice of programs and a selection (or starting signal) of the program automatically selected based on downloaded data. in other words the current systems allow one to obtain and display information but they are incapable of automatically triggering based on this information a particular action wanted by the television viewer (see for example documents WO 91 00 670 and EP 0,572,090).
Programming systems are also known for televisions which allow one to select in advance a channel number and the starting and ending times of programs, but these programming systems only use data inputted manually by the television viewer and cannot taken into account other preexisting or external data such as the type of show or whether it is being aired simultaneously with another show of interest to the same viewer (simultaneous shows).
Other known systems using teletext are conceived only for automatic starting at the appropriate time of the recording of a show on a videocassette recorder, see for example EP 0,503,070 and EP 0,460,520. In particular these systems do not exercise any control over the television itself such that their possibilities remain limited.